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The Importance Of Personal Writing

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Writing personal essays has always been hard for me because I’m a generally closed off person and it’s difficult for me to open myself up to a bunch of strangers. I was more comfortable with writing about facts and research because that wouldn’t force me to go into specific details about important life changing events that I experienced. This wasn’t the case with English 291. I went into this class not really understanding what creative non-fiction was, but I wasn’t nervous about that because I assumed that we would just be writing research driven papers with a little bit of personal influence. This all changed when we were introduced to our first writing prompt for the class. I was nervous and uncomfortable with the first writing prompt …show more content…

It was helpful and motivating to have the opportunity to read everyone’s drafts because I could tell a lot of people in the class had the same reservations I did when I first started out. By the time it came to write our second essay, the research paper, I was more willing to open myself up about talk about something that I normally don’t tell people about, my problems with anxiety. It was tough to write about this topic because it was something that I haven’t even told my close friends about. Writing about my panic attacks and my reservations in social situations in my first draft was awkward and I didn’t really understand how to incorporate my personal moments with anxiety to the research I had gathered. It was helpful to read the other published drafts to get a sense of style and structure that other writers had used. I wasn’t happy with my first draft, and I noticed the struggle with transitioning between personal and research segments. I also didn’t know how to end my essay because how do you end an essay about anxiety? When we discussed our second drafts in class, I really appreciated the ideas and the criticism the class had for me, because the suggestions were helpful and gave me a sense of direction that I wanted to take my essay in. This class truly shaped me as a writer because it forced me to open and be more myself with my essays and

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